UAB Medicine announced today that it is adding a chief operating officer (COO) position to its operational structure and has named University of Alabama Health Services Foundation (UAHSF) Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President of Ambulatory Services Reid F. Jones to the role.

Jones will be responsible for management of UAB Hospital, Ambulatory Services (the clinical component of UAB Medicine) and Health System Information Services (HSIS), as well as a new revenue cycle function, funds flow operations and support services.

He will report to UAB Health System CEO Will Ferniany, Ph.D.

“We are excited that Reid has agreed to transition into this important role,” Ferniany said. “His experience, background and familiarity with UAB Medicine and our strategic plan will be invaluable as we enhance our operations.”

Jones, a Birmingham native and UAB graduate, has been an administrator at UAB Medicine for more than 20 years.

“We have a great team in place, and I am looking forward to working more closely with UAB Hospital, Ambulatory Services, HSIS and the clinical departments as we, together, face the challenges of the current health care environment,” Jones said. “We will ensure that the entire organization is aligned and focused on providing the highest quality patient care in an environment that assures our patients and their families feel they made the very best decision regarding where they receive health care.”

Jones’ aim in the newly created position is to ensure that the COO’s role is one that enhances ongoing efforts related to AMC 21, the long-term strategic plan of UAB Medicine.

“Our Reaching for Excellence initiatives are producing outstanding results as reflected in our patient satisfaction scores,” Jones said. “I believe further alignment of the organization will only improve the experience of our patients.”

Jones’ previous positions at UAB Medicine include executive vice president of the UAHSF/senior vice president ambulatory services of the UAB Health System, vice president of management services and executive administrator of the Department of Surgery. Prior to his UAB Medicine career, Jones served as vice president of planning and development at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Dwivedi, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will join UAB Aug. 16, 2013, as a professor and director of translational neuroscience in the Mood Disorders Program.

Six specialists in mood disorder research or patient care have joined UAB’s Psychiatry department since January 2012, including Richard Shelton, M.D., the Charles B. Ireland Professor and vice chair for Research in the department, who came to UAB to create and direct the Mood Disorders Program.

“We are well on our way to becoming a top-10 depression and mood disorders center,” Meador-Woodruff said.

One-third of the department’s research funding is in mood disorders work. The department is also heavily engaged in community outreach programs across the state for major mental illness and suicide prevention and awareness.

Since Meador-Woodruff joined UAB in 2006, 44 new faculty members have been recruited into the department. Collectively, they have added $25 million to UAB’s extramural grant base.

“The recruitment and targeted growth in strategic areas, such as the neurosciences, are part of UAB Medicine’s AMC 21 strategic plan,” said Anupam Agarwal, M.D., interim senior vice president for Medicine and dean of the School of Medicine. “Investment in highly productive faculty like Dr. Dwivedi is a hallmark of the plan. This is another step toward deepening our excellence at UAB and helping to build a knowledge-based economy for Birmingham and Alabama.”

Dwivedi’s research is extensively funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Stanley Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. His focus is on the molecular biology of mood disorders and suicide, examining the roles of neurotransmitter receptors, cytokines, neurotrophins, cellular signaling and neural plasticity in depression and suicide risk using gene expression, RNA sequencing, microRNAs and epigenetic approaches.

A native of India, Dwivedi earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Allahabad, as well as a doctorate in biochemistry from the Central Drug Research Institute. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he joined the faculty in 1994.

Dwivedi has received a number of awards and honors, including the Rafaelson Fellowship Award of the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum in 2000, a Young Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in 2001 and the Young Investigator Colloquium Award from the International Society for Neurochemistry in 2003 and 2005.

Dwivedi has been a member of the International Association of Suicide Prevention Task Force- Genetics and Neurobiology of Suicide since 2009, and he also served as a topic expert for the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention Research Task Force in 2012. He has been on the Scientific Advisory Board of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention since 2009 and is serving as a member in its Research Grants Committee. Additionally, he serves on the NPAS Review Committee for the National Institute of Mental Health. He has had many grants as principal or co-investigator from the NIMH, NARSAD, the Stanley Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He has had 99 peer-reviewed publications and 13 book chapters; recently, he edited The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide.

Meador-Woodruff said philanthropic funds were essential to successfully recruit Dwivedi to UAB. “This is an example of the importance of philanthropy to what we do for discovering new science and helping more patients,” he said.

New round of travel awards designed to drive new research collaborations and increase researchers’ sense of mission.

Faculty, postdocs and students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) now have more chances to study the HIV and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics in Africa. A new round of funding will support travel to and from the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH), the premier Howard Hughes-funded research center in Durban, South Africa, which has the goal of fostering research collaborations.

The UAB Infectious Disease, Global Health and Vaccine Steering Committee this week issued a request for applications from faculty and postdocs interested in travel between K-RITH and UAB.

Ray L. Watts, M.D., formerly dean of the School of Medicine and the new UAB president, had designated more than $100,000 in funds from AMC21,UAB Medicine’s strategic plan, to fund new initiatives proposed by the steering committee. Global health has been deemed an area where continued investment can solidify UAB’s leadership position, prepare it to win interdisciplinary research grants and help it to recruit exceptional students.

According to the World Health Organization, 34 million people are infected with HIV globally, with 1.8 million annual deaths and 60 percent of all cases occurring in Africa. Tuberculosis is second only to HIV as a global killer, with nearly 14 million people infected and 1.4 million deaths each year. The largest number of new TB cases occurred in Asia in 2011, accounting for 60 percent of new cases globally, but sub-Saharan Africa had the greatest proportion of new cases per population. A third of people with HIV also have TB, and HIV infection often turns TB from a dormant infection into a deadly, active one.

“We hope to build further educational, professional and research ties by helping our community travel to and from K-RITH, an institution on the front lines of the battle against HIV and drug-resistant forms of TB,” said Troy Randall, Ph.D., the Claude Bennett Scholar in the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology within the UAB School of Medicine. Randall co-directs the AMC21 Infectious Diseases, Global Health and Vaccines Steering Committee along with Michael Saag, M.D., professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UAB and among the founders of the 1917 Clinic.

The Travel Award initiative is designed to get faculty from K-RITH and UAB to meet, exchange ideas, give seminars and potentially set up collaborations, and it will pay for travel awards, pilot projects and an HIV/TB symposium at UAB featuring reports from K-RITH researchers and collaborators.

“When UAB students and researchers travel to Durban, or K-RITH researchers come to Birmingham, they have unparalleled experiences and benefit from real-world fieldwork,” said Randall. “First-hand exposure to the toll taken by poverty and epidemics in Africa has a profound impact. Researchers return with a renewed sense of mission as they seek to contribute to the design of future vaccines and treatments.”

K-RITH represents a collaboration between the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), with support from the South African government. Its mission is to conduct outstanding basic and clinical research on tuberculosis and HIV, and the combination of a high local disease burden and advanced laboratory facilities makes it uniquely equipped to do so.

Anchoring the UAB-K-RITH partnership onsite at K-RITH will be Andries Steyn, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Microbiology. He was the first investigator recruited to join K-RITH in June 2011, and he retains his UAB faculty position.

Travel to collaborate

The Travel Award initiative is designed to get faculty from K-RITH and UAB to meet, exchange ideas, give seminars and potentially set up collaborations, and it will pay for travel awards, pilot projects and an HIV/TB symposium at UAB featuring reports from K-RITH researchers and collaborators.

Travel awards pay for travel, food and boarding for a short visit (up to five days) from K-RITH to UAB or vice versa. The amount is not set, because some will go for a quick preliminary visit, and others will propose to learn or teach a skill set while there.

Interested faculty must identify their counterparts at the other site and prepare a travel and work itinerary, then apply to the committee for funds. The application deadline is March 15, 2013, with review of applications immediately thereafter. All supported travel must be completed by Oct. 1, 2013. Those interested can apply online.

One goal of the preliminary travel is to help researchers set up the next component of the new program: joint UAB/K-RITH research pilot projects. This funding stream would cover travel and research expenses for projects that collect data and analyze patient samples, steps that will strengthen attempts afterward to apply for grants to continue the work.

Applications for Pilot Project Awards should describe the overall research objective, how it will benefit the labs, both institutions and the aims of the proposed experiments.

In a separate but related program, K-RITH has sponsored a 10-week summer internship program for undergraduates, graduate students, public health students and medical students. That application deadline, however, was Feb. 11.

Finally, the new funding will also support a symposium with a TB and HIV research theme called the 5th Southeastern Mycobacteria Meeting. It will feature yet-to-be-determined speakers from UAB and K-RITH, and it will be held in UAB’s Heritage Hall on Jan. 24-26, 2014.

Agarwal’s appointment follows the Feb. 8, 2013, selection of former Dean and Senior Vice President Ray L. Watts, M.D., as the seventh president of UAB. A national search will begin immediately to choose a permanent dean.

Agarwal is the Marie S. Ingalls Endowed Chair in Nephrology Leadership and director of the Division of Nephrology. He is also vice chair for Research in the Department of Medicine and served as interim chair of Medicine from August 2011 until August 2012.

“Anupam is an outstanding leader. He has the respect and admiration of his colleagues and he is a stalwart advocate for UAB. He was an obvious choice to be the interim senior vice president and dean,” said Watts, who served in those roles from October 2010 until his appointment as president. “With Anupam, the School of Medicine will not stand still; it will continue to gain momentum toward our strategic goals.”

“It is an honor to be named interim dean of the UAB School of Medicine,” Agarwal said. “Dr. Watts has laid a clear and progressive path toward even greater success for the School, and we will keep moving forward along that path.”

Agarwal said he will not be a candidate for the permanent dean position, but looks forward to working with the selectee on a smooth and seamless transition. Seth Landefeld, M.D., chair of the Department of Medicine, will name an interim director for Nephrology while Agarwal serves as dean.

Watts and colleagues launched the strategic plan for the School of Medicine, called AMC 21, in early 2011. It dovetails with the UAB Health System plan and aims to make UAB the preferred academic medical center. Initiatives include recruiting and retaining faculty and enhancing nine strategic areas: cancer; diabetes, obesity and metabolism; neurosciences; infectious diseases and global health; education; cardiovascular diseases; immunology and autoimmunity; transplantation; and primary care.

Agarwal graduated with honors from Kasturba Medical College in India. He completed his residency and a fellowship in nephrology at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in India. He completed another fellowship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and later served on the faculty at the University of Florida.

Agarwal joined UAB as an associate professor in 2003 and was promoted to professor in 2005. He was appointed division director for Nephrology in 2008 and vice chair for Research for the Department of Medicine in 2009. He was appointed to the Marie S. Ingalls Endowed Chair in Nephrology Leadership in April 2011. Agarwal’s clinical and basic science interests center around acute kidney failure. He also is director of the NIH funded UAB-University of California San Diego O’Brien Core Center for Acute Kidney Injury Research. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and recipient of multiple awards including the 2012 Dean’s award for excellence in leadership and the 2013 Graduate Dean’s award for excellence in mentorship.